1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of immunology and oncology. More particularly, it concerns the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer by screening subjects for the presence of soluble and tumor cell-surface bound MIC. Further, it concerns the treatment of cancer using MIC as a cancer detection marker.
2. Description of Related Art
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States producing 38,500 deaths in year of 2000. Half of all men and one-third of all women in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes. Today, millions of people are living with cancer or have had cancer.
Despite many therapeutic advances, early detection of malignancy has great potential as a means of affecting outcome and survival of cancer patients. Very often, the disease is too far advanced and therapeutic options are limited. Screening procedures such as Papanicolou smears for squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix are an important way of screening for cancer. The development of additional methods with similar potential for early detection of other malignancies would be of considerable aid to clinical oncologists.
Investigators have identified several substances that are produced by tumor cells for use as diagnostic markers of cancer. These include the germ cell markers human choriogonadotropin and alpha-fetoprotein, which are very specific markers, and less sensitive and specific markers such as carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), CA-12.5, CA-19.9, CA-15.3, prostate specific antigen (PSA), and others. Recent reviews describe the use of these and other tumor markers in diagnostic and therapeutic applications (Pohl et al., 1983; Kluvins et al., 1983; Sultzeanu et al., 1985; Virji et al., 1988; and Sikorska et al., 1988). However, cancer still remains undetected in a large number of patients for lengths of time, during which beneficial treatment could have been administered. Even subsequent to treatment, it often is not known to what extent treatment effected eradication of cancer or tumor cells. Thus, additional markers are needed, as are assays based on those markers.
There is a continued need for sensitive diagnostic and prognostic methods of detecting cancer in samples that may or may not contain cancer cells and to assess the level of cancer in patients before treatment and/or after treatment.
Similarly, autimmune diseases is an area in which there exists a continued need for diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic methods and compositions.
Autoimmune diseases are believed to afflict approximately 14 to 22 million Americans, roughly five to eight percent of the population. They are also among the ten leading causes of death in women in every age group up until age 64. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) alone numbers approximately 2.1 million cases in the United States, including 30,000 to 50,000 cases involving children. Treatment and diagnostics for RA, as with many other autoimmune diseases, are limited, and alternatives are needed.